Creepy Pedro Reviews "Generation X Video"

I arrived early to Mistress Quickly's tavern and found Dr. Johnson, as anticipated, already arguing and drowning in his cups.

"A theatrical performance can be appreciated only from the height of a man's two eyes!" he was shouting at Quickley's dog. "Your opinions lack stature, in every sense of the word! The day I take seriously the theatrical criticisms of a BEAGLE is the day I deign to piss in the cup of a Scotsman!"

To this the dog expelled a fart so enormous it should have filled the very halls of Pandemonium (if not it had a natural inclination toward ascension), and so gusty that the lamps flared in a dangerous fashion, and so rank of gas that Madame Quickly must have feared for the health of her customers if she were not lost in merriment, cackling wildly, dugs a-heaving, one hand slapping the unfortunate Dr. Johnson's recently-singed peruke.

"Oh dear Samuel!" she whooped. "Put that dog's arse-trumpet i' your dictionary, under the letter BRAPPP! It hath twice the politic of all the Beedle's bollocks you've wrote so far!"

"'That fart was wise indeed," Dr. Johnson admitted. "Mingere cum bumbis, rec saluberrima est lumbis."

"Where be our guest tonight?" I asked the silent tapper, and the he nodded to the tavern door. A man of great distinction stood on the threshold. "Two bags of oats for my mount, and don't forget the sauce!" he yelled to the Hostler. "My mare doth love the sauce!"

"Dearest Pedro!" cried Dr. Johnson, raising his bulk and motioning to Mistress Quickley for another bottle of sack. "You've tarried so, we half expected to find ye lost or slain!"

"Only one of those briefly, and I charge each of you to divine which," he said, and even the Tapper laughed at so clever a jest.

"Lost, I gather! How now, Boswell, this shifty rogue in the sheepskin doublet is weaver Pedro, a man of wit, a master artisan, and the creepiest fellow I have ever had the fortune to meet."

"I have heard of you, slimy toady," said Pedro pleasantly as we shook our hands.

"A weaver you say?"

"Aye, the halls from St. Peter's to far off Araby are graced with my warp and woof."

Mistress Quickly, having arrived with the sack and seeing entry for another fulsome jest, shouted, "A better treat then we experienced not 'alf an hour hence, which were this doggie's FART and woof!" All fell about in that curious British way so often acted in Shakespeare's bawdy "Carry On, Dead King," of holding wide the mouth and turning head from viz to viz, accompanied by a scattershot laughing as loud and regular as Antwerp's artillery fire.

"Mistress!" Dr. Johnson wiped a tear from his eye. "I grant you, though art quick!"

"How could one doubt it...'tis my proper name!" And once again we cackled, as was our comick nature. But throughout the merriment our weaver, Pedro, had been wiping something from his eye, and afore long Dr. Johnson made note of his sad countenance.

"Enough of these quibbles. Pedro, what troubles you? Why the creepy frowning viz?"

Pedro shook off Dr. Johnson's embrace and rose from the table, commanding the attention of all in the tavern. "I mourn the death of an idea, a dream, the final passing of culture, the end of the most companiable banter on our old and noble isle...the closing of our beloved entertainment vendor, Generation X!" Pedro collapsed to the table and sobbed, schoolgirl-like, into his sack.

"Have you not grown reconciled, dear Pedro?" asked Dr. Johnson. "It has been sad for us, true, but 'tis no reason to cry in your drink. For everything there is a season and an allotted time. Even the jolliest of men shall die before he wish. May we all go in the manner of Generation X -- in our hearty primes -- before we descend into ignominity and penury, our metaphorical halls and stages used only for wenching and bear-baiting and games of 'Throw The Apple at The Captured Esquimaux.'"

"Oh, the porn, which I so craved..."

"Man can live without porn, and without arty foreign films too. I have explained all this to Boswell."

"Mr. Johnson is right," I said. "There is peer-to-peer file sharing."

"Pah!" said Pedro. "Barely 300 baud in my wattle-and-daub hut so far from the city. It's trouble enough for a man to play a full game of Hunt The Wumpus or Schmoo, let alone to download the entirety of 'Michael Palin's Dugs-a-Plenty' in high definition."

"Patience, Pedro...drink of my sack."

"And where will I see YOUR films?" cried Pedro. "This latest--"

Dr. Johnson slapped his brainpan, sending his peruke into the fire. "Blast it man, I told you, I am not that blackamoor actor you prate upon!"

"Snakes On An Omnibus, Dr. Johnson! 'Twas your finest role! Ever since I first set my viz 'pon the premiere performance of Pulp Fiction at the Globe--"

"I have said time and time again--"

"Three encores! And John Travolta dancing!"

"Enough!" Dr. Johnson bellowed, and the babble of anachronistic cross-generational dialect ceased. "My peruke is in flames once again, Pedro, as is so often the way when we meet. I will trade all the porn in the world if you will stop this tiresome contrivance of mistaken identity."

"I shall consent, Dr. Johnson, if only you would enact a bitter moment from 'Do the Right Thing.'"

At this the enraged Doctor lurched into the thousand ticks and vapours to which he was subject in times of distress. "A turd i' your teeth!" he shouted. "Johnny Bums in Scratchland!"

Pedro rose from his seat. "Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure, but I must be off...Generation X is disclosing its wares and I must secure 'Michael Palin's Arsey-Turvy' before it is gone. You will excuse me." I tilted my hat, and Dr. Johnson, unable to cease his strange hopping perambulations, merely scowled from beneath his armpits.

"Let's rob a carriage and dominate a play!" shouted the fat knight in the corner, but for once nobody was listening to him.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Infest Wisely"

The best science fiction films show us the world as it may someday be: the boinking of "A Clockwork Orange," the tasty vittles of the "Soylent Green," the drab and dusty coattails and derbies of "Michael Palin's Brazil."

This new film, "Infest Wisely," presents the most frightening future of all, where an influence has caused appalling actors mumble improvised lines in a world that not even the writer has explored. This future will be captured on film by a cameraperson who does not understand the verb "to film" and it will be edited with the only tool available in the future: The Lazybones Splicer with Snooze Attachment, 2050.

In the future, I imagine, this film will be shown to colonists on Jupiter when all the other films have been stolen by displaced Jovian natives, and the colonists will admit that even considering their immense hardships living inside titanium exoskeletons on a deadly gas planet they have yet to see something so awful as that. Perhaps, they hope, the next movie from Earth will star Terri Garr, and to forget their troubles they will write letters to their girlfriends in their outerspace journals.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Dillinger is Dead"

Italy is the strangest movie I have ever seen.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Austin Powers"

The rumours are true: Mike Meyers can do no wrong!

This is not because he hasn't tried. Before he starts working on any movie he wonders "How can I make this go wrong?" and then he says "I know, I'll make these jokes not funny! My jokes will require too long to happen!" But somehow when the camera is on him we laugh at his cute ways, and when he is ad libbing the libs he ads are funny, and the movie is another big hit no matter what Mike Meyers intended to do. Ka-ching! He buys another expensive thing for his enjoyment!

Like Eddie Murphy, maybe he thinks that if he plays all the parts in the movie he will have a greater influence to mess it up. This would be a good plan, except that when he finds himself in his makeup chair he is suddenly a different person, a cute ad-libbing character who does not want to do wrong. And the audience agrees with this performance! We laugh! Unlike the way we respond to Eddie Murphy!

"Austin Powers" is a good example of a movie where several characters may or may not be Mike Meyers. If you are a film critic like me then you often wonder "Is this Mike Meyers on the screen, and is he doing anything wrong?" You ponder this for only five minutes before you are laughing uncontrollably, and you think to yourself "These are things about sex that I never knew!" and eventually, when the time comes to write your review, you can only say "Funny man!" You might also say "Excellent lighting and an obscure geopolitical subtext!" because you are a film critic after all.

I disparage the sexy females in the "Austin Powers" movies because they are not Mike Meyers, they are not as funny. Meyers has been called a "Woman's Writer" because he writes meaningful parts for women, and when he sees them with their breasts and hips he shouts "Oh, HORNY, baby!" And God help us, we laugh!

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Splinter"

What if you create a monster that is too scary to even film?

If you create this monster from the mind of your wickedness and also the wickedness of mimes and gymnasts, and on the set when it's time to record the movie you say to your cameraman, "Film the creature!" and the cameraman says "It's too scary! I can't even look!" and all you see are the edges of the creature and maybe some flickery light?

It's no use! No matter how much you yell "To the left! The creature isn't what you're filming! That's a shelf in a gas station!"

And not to be sexist, if also you have a female woman with a camera, and you say to her "Film the creature, already! Be brave!" and she screams in fear and in the editing room the footage is shaky like shot by a schoolgirl, one too afraid, who becomes all a'shivery-shakey in the sight of your creature?

What do you do? You must simply make the movie anyway, as the "Splinter" director did, and perhaps you throw up your hands and say "You really should've seen that creature!" and laugh ruefully...the rueful laugh of an imagination too wicked even for horror films, the laugh of a man without footage. He wishes, we think, that someday in the future -- maybe even in a sequel -- his crew will be braver and will look his wicked creature straight in the eyes...then we'll see it and we will believe him!

Until that day the Splinter creature is something seen only with Pause, and even then when it is a blur of spinning in front of the shelves or sometimes beside the shelves. On Pause, the creature is almost caught in a perfect moment. On Pause you cannot hear the dialog of the characters who suffer horrific transformations: the wimp into the hero, the tough girl into crying and all a'shivery-shakey, the heartless brutal villain who is actually not understood by us or even by the writers until we find his whole purpose is to HELP PEOPLE, but we never understood, we didn't stop to wonder until his whole arm was gone, so now we must care?

A man puts a thermometer in his mouth and stumbles coldly in a parking lot for ten minutes with bags of ice against his chest, as a climax, and they sure got enough footage of that part.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "District 9"

It should not surprise you that, when I accidentally touched the grease of a Hollywood Scriptwriter's typewriter, I began to transform into a Hollywood Scriptwriter myself.

This first manifested as a paunchy sadness. My doctor, instead of giving me Milk of Magnesia and a poultice for my bedsores, hit me on the head and wrapped me in a bag, and the next thing I knew I was in Peter Jackson's torture chamber, screaming.

"I have an idea for a blockbuster movie, but I'm unable to to nail it down, you see," said Mr. Jackson, reclining on a settee with his hairy feet sticking out. "I have stolen a disused Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter from George Lucas' secret museum, but neither my Faceless Spouse nor I can make it operate." And there I saw the Faceless Spouse herself, gnashing and twisting.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I cried. "WHERE IS MY WIFE?"

Mr. Jackson applauded. "That's excellent! Your transformation into a Hollywood Scriptwriter is almost complete! We need you to operate the Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter in order to ensure the success of our new movie. We want it to be about rampaging aliens that get all shot up. Other than this we do not know."

"I WILL NOT COOPERATE!" I shouted, but when Peter Jackson shocked me with an energy weapon attached to his belly, I told him that he needed to write a socially-relevant story with a strong character arc.

"Social commentary can be complicated and taxing to the audience," said Peter Jackson.

"Not if there are enough guns," I explained patiently, and both Peter and his Faceless Spouse applauded.

"We'll say it's all very maverick and visionary, and not a Hollywood action film at all!" said Peter, laughing. "If anybody gets bored, we'll say it's simply entertainment and not a social commentary!" His Faceless Spouse seemed to enjoy Peter's joke, and as a reward she shambled forth to push gruel into his wet, questing maw. This, I saw, was the source of their twisted bond: the gruel with flecks of meat, the laughing faces, the cynical horror.

Suddenly contemplative, Mr. Jackson stopped eating and pushed his Faceless Spouse aside. "But wait. I can't think of a single socially-relevant topic that hasn't been explored ad-nauseum."

"Xenophobic discrimination," I said.

"Is that good or bad?" asked Peter, and after a few additional shocks due to my predictable non-compliance, I typed out the first draft of a movie which would explain to viewers that xenophobic discrimination is both bad and pervasive. After reading it, Peter put down the script and said "That's really enlightening," and his Faceless Spouse gibbered mindlessly as though hungry for sex.

"But..." said Peter, turning over slightly like a sleek and largely immobile seal, revealing the engorged suckers which hung from his buttocks. "But...if we're going to convince the audience of such an audacious moral idea, we need to make them CARE about the goopy aliens. They must feel EMPATHY. Here's my guy from Weta Digital," and for the next three hours I endured a featurette about the design and implementation of the alien creatures. "After we film the man in the green suit, we digitally erase the wires and begin the sound design," said the guy from Weta Digital.

"STOP IT!" I screamed. "DETACH ME FROM THIS MACHINE! SHUT HIM UP!"

"Not until you give us a hook to hang the audience's sympathy on."

"LET ME GO! YOU CANNOT DO THIS! THERE ARE LAWS!"

"Not in Middle Earth," he snarled, and he barraged me with electrical zaps from his bellygun. "Give us what we want or I'll blast your stinking willawalla to the billabong!"

"DESIGN A CUTE ALIEN BABY WITH WET EYES!" I screamed, and then everybody exploded, and now Peter Jackson is rich, and I'm just sitting around and folding these fucking flowers.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "The Exterminating Angel"

I warned them! Didn't I tell the improbable Mexican aristocrats that they must not rise above their social station lest they suffer the consequences of my wrath?

If they were worried about starvation, they should have packed a taco. Rather than fear baldness, they could have donned a wide sombrero. Had they put aside their evening wear and instead worn their comfortable ponchos, they would have escaped the ire and condemnation of me...yes, THE EXTERMINATING PEDRO!

A mistranslated title has confused film students for almost fifty years. Solemn, bearded young women unplug their cherrybomb mouths and scream "What was it all about, Pedro?" because they do not know my full name, they do not know my predilections, they have been tragically mislead.

You see, The Exterminating Pedro admires and respects Mexican culture, especially the jolly antics of the Mexican Jumping Beans. To me, Mexicans and their film directors are like flies in a washbasin, pleasing when they link arms and copulate and play their grand pianos. Otherwise they anger me, so with newspaper or poisoned frijoles I smite them 'til they're DEAD.

But still the girl with the goatee is screaming "What did it all mean?" so let me explain a few things. When the Mexican lady saw a plastic hand floating the darkness, that was MY plastic hand, seeking alms and offering salvation. She screamed because of the Mexican complex about religion, finance, land ownership, imperialism, cleanliness, and The Alamo.

What about the bear and the sheep? Those were MY bear and sheep so please don't touch them.

Why didn't the victims simply leave the room, she asks? Because I wouldn't allow it! I am The Exterminating Pedro! This is all you need to know!

Enough...stop shouting, bearded lady, or I will put you in a room with nine other people who are much like you and equally vapid. I, The Exterminating Pedro, grow weary of your buzzing. Like I did with the improbable Mexican aristocrats of 1962, I wave my plastic hand for silence. You have been warned. You will play or die.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Airport"

Because we might die before or after we experience love, "Airport" says "Go for it, Mister! Beware the old lady!" These sentiments are even more important now, after The Terrorism, than they were 1000 years ago.

There was a tough-guy mechanic named Joe Patroni, constructed not of flesh or blood but of tightly-knitted quips, like the "Quip Golum" of old. How can one build a tougher man than Patroni, except perhaps with additional quips and sequels? Will he ever get the girl? Will she be compatible with his gruff? These are questions for the next time, my friend, in "Airport 2."

Patroni is in my favourite movie scene: the Snow Boss says "Get out of my way, Patroni!" and he shouts "NEVER!" and there is a mammoth clash of Patroni and the snow removal machine, and you wonder who's going to win until Patroni says "NeeeAHH!" and pushes one inch further and the Snow Boss loses the fight...UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Mayhem and suction, this is the weird world of Airport Management, which you wouldn't understand until you've actually seen it as your parents have. Do you want to apply to work in this job? No way, married men and women, this is not the placement for the likes of you! Gigalos and whores need apply, it says here, if you are cockpit licensed.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Hell House"

Some people are worried about going to "The Hell House" after they die, so I will try to be accurate here instead of riding the winged Gorgon of Dante's fancy, no matter how often that Gorgon says "C'mon, Pedro, and ride me!"

The "Hell House" documentary was a powerful life-changing experience for me, not because I was ever a Pentecostal Person who killed my peers but because I have spent every one of my two-thousand lives inside "The Hell House." I do not expect this situation to change.

For example, in one life, my wife left me for a lover she met in a chat room for cat fanciers. I was the young girl who drank too much alcohol and saw a tree fall beside an old man, and yet that girl (who was I) did nothing and told nobody and perhaps even smiled. I burned my bra on the capital steps and then spent eternity eating the same food over and over again, while waitresses tormented me and made me continue to pay for the food even though it was just the same food over and over...as though it were all some kind of "Hell House!"

Like the children in "The Hell House" I learned that it is difficult to refuse homosexuality when it is slipped to me at a rave, because raves make you feel "out of this world" and are distracting for those who think in "slow-mo." My school teacher used to say to me: "WHAT IS YOUR HOMEWORK, PEDRO?" and I'd scream "I DON'T KNOW, STOP LAUGHING AT ME!" and the teacher would say "YOU'RE CREEPY, PEDRO, AND YOU ARE THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD!" and I'd scream "WHEN WILL IT END?" just before, fortunately, it ended. This is a bit like when "The Hell House" ended.

Other than that, however, the movie was booooring. I learned that the Pentecostal People in the film were not ageless demons who had existed "before Jesus time," but instead they were all from the south, and some of them were in fact very old. According to the man who appeared in the middle of this documentary, the Pentecostal People spent time in hell and wanted to warn us to go elsewhere for a while. One part of the torture was to wear a plastic bag, and another part was abortion. They would not allow the Dalai Llama to go into "The Hell House" because of a policy regarding animals. FOR THIS ALONE I SALUTE THEM!

One final thing to watch out for: at 48:10 minutes into the movie, the "Hell House" people spoke in a love language that I didn't understand! I did not understand that love! This should not surprise anybody but it made me feel terrible!